I just registered for OSCON. They say I should advertise that I am a speaker. Here goes.

For the last several years, I've presented multiple talks at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference. My Scalable Internet Architectures talk has been quite popular and drawn large crowds. It is an interesting talk as it doesn't really change with time. As I say, "if principles of good engineering changed frequently, I'd never drive on bridges." The talk is about sound engineering approaches to building really large consumer-facing websites. Almost all of it is open-source centric, which is why it fits so well at OSCON. While my Scalable talk was not accepted this year, I've got another talk lined up that will rock your world.

I am quite excited that my other proposal was accepted. This year I will be giving a session about using DTrace to perform "full-stack" introspection.

Using DTrace we will deep dive into the amazingly cool questions one can ask. Is my application really hitting disk? If so, what line of code is causing it? My process is being descheduled by the kernel, why? I have 100 Apache process and some randomly segfault, how do I get a stack trace when that happens? The app I am running doesn’t have the right debugging output, I need to know more!

DTrace is an oracle. The value of the answers depends on the quality of the questions. Learn to ask good question and prepare to be amazed at the possibilities.

I've given a variation on this presentation at a few places now (both internal to OmniTI and external) and had really positive feedback. I'll be taking these prior presentations and polishing them up for a 45 minute escapade that will open your eyes to new possibilities. DTrace is an amazing tool and once you get used to it, you can really take it for granted. I do. When people watch the presentation and say "by the power of Greyskull," I know I've made my point.

Come to OSCON. Immerse yourself in technology.